Friday, August 27

Is it arugula season where you are? Is there an arugula season? Since I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in the county who grows it, I suppose that arugula season around here is whenever I have some in my kitchen garden—and that will be very soon.

While mixing up the third or fourth batch of the quick and easy pesto, I took a cue from my favorite basil pesto recipe and tried adding some fresh tomatoes. I loved the results, but never got around to sharing them.

Animal cruelty disclaimer: The sheep in these photos (who willingly put the buckets on their heads) were not harmed during any photoshoots. This ewe you see here was happily licking molasses residues off the inside of her bucket until it was gently removed immediately after this picture was snapped.

Tuesday, August 17

During the summer, the clothes we take off at the end of the day are usually soaked with sweat, so instead of tossing them into the laundry basket (where scary things happen to dirty wet clothes in hot and humid weather) we hang them up to dry overnight on this expandable folding rack that we leave set up just outside the bathroom, in the living room. (After going through numerous wooden drying racks over the years, this metal one has been working out great.)

Thursday, August 5

Down in the sheep barn feed room, we've been slowly replacing our plastic feed containers with metal ones, because mice and squirrels tend to chew big holes right through the plastic in order to get to the food, thus pretty much ruining them, although I have successfully plugged some pretty good sized holes with duct tape. (Our entire lives are held together with duct tape—along with clothespins and bungee cords.)

Wednesday, August 4

Many of you have expressed an interest in hearing more about what my day to day life is like out here in the country—both the good and the bad parts—so lately I've been trying to include more farm life tidbits and stories in some of my posts. I'm also still working that Frequently Asked Farmgirl Questions page.The FAFQ page is up!

There are so many things I've learned during the past 16 years that I simply take for granted, until I stop and remind myself things like there was a time when I had no idea what a bottle baby was, let alone anything about taking care of one, and that maybe you'd like to know something about them, too, rather than just seeing the pictures.

Of course once I start writing I have a tendency to ramble on, and since I'm not a very fast writer, these sort of posts take me a while to complete. My goal is to get back to sharing something here every day, with longer posts interspersed between the shorter ones, along with lots more recipes.

If you enjoy these farm life tidbits and stories and would like to see more of them, I'd love for you to let me know. And if you come here more for the pictures than the words, please let me know that, too! Anonymous comments can be left, and you're also welcome to email me: farmgirlfare AT gmail DOT com. It can sometimes take me a while to reply to e-mail, but as always, your feedback is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Sunday, August 1

Want to hang out a while longer? You'll find links to all of this year's lambing season photos here. And you can learn about our new Katahdin hair sheep (Ava and her lamb are both 100% Katahdin) here. More photos of Ava and her twins are here and here and here and here. (When you're born first, you get to be in a lot of pictures.)